Wood and Stokes blow West Indies away to power England to 3-0 clean sweep

In the end, resistance was futile. West Indies’ lower order had simply no answer to a truly electric burst of reverse swing from Mark Wood and, even after Ben Stokes had personally vaporised a measly target to seal a 10-wicket victory for England and a 3-0 series clean sweep, the captain’s fast bowler was still the name on everyone’s lips.

Even with a sense of inevitability about proceedings it was pretty spine-tingling stuff after lunch at Edgbaston, as Wood hared in from the Pavilion End amid a wall of sound and delivered the kind of lower order demolition job once associated with the tourists. He claimed five for nine in the space of just six overs, the old ball hooping late at speeds north of 90mph to send stumps tumbling and roll the tourists for 175 all out.

After a morning in which England patiently nipped out three batsmen, this fifth five-wicket Test haul for Wood was almost a blur and left the openers needing to knock off just 82 runs to complete formalities. The only snag was that one of them, Zak Crawley, had been sent to hospital for scans on a hand injury after sustaining a blow when dropping Jason Holder in the slips off Stokes.

Stokes dashed off the field to strap on the pads and then reemerged in an utterly murderous mood, crashing the fastest half-century by an Englishman in Test cricket – 24 balls, to pip Ian Botham’s previous record against India in 1981 by four – and then wrapping up this one-sided affair when he heaved Kraigg Brathwaite’s right-arm short ball for his second six.

Walking off unbeaten on 57 from 28 balls – Ben Duckett, his partner, a breezy 25 from 16 – Stokes had completed the third 3-0 clean sweep of his captaincy. Most pleasing, one suspects, were the emergence of two of its architects, be it wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, 95 on the second day here, or Gus Atkinson’s 22 wickets in his debut series.

• Full report from Edgbaston to follow here later …